Influences of the Matching Effects of Cognitive and Emotional Factors on Attitude Change

Tung-Cheng Wu, National Cheng Kung Univeristy, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC

Jon-Fan Hu, National Cheng Kung Univeristy, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC

Shu-Ling Peng, National Cheng Kung Univeristy, Tainan, Taiwan, ROC

Abstract

This research is aimed to study whether we will have the same
attitude change when we have the same intensity of cognitive or emotional level
for attitude. People who have higher involvement will be persuaded by central
route and low involvement will be persuaded by peripheral route: the matching
effect in attitude change. The present study controlled the intensity of both
cognitive and emotional factor and instructed participants to express their
initial attitude as well as attitude change under four experimental
manipulations. Results showed that only matching effect of emotional factor was
found but not cognitive factor. A connectionist model was therefore built to
simulate the processes and found that there would have different thresholds for
cognitive and emotional routes and the threshold of cognitive route should be
higher than emotional route. Implications are proposed based on the behavioral
and simulation investigations.